


Bloody Waters

by EducationalAdmiral



Series: If This Is Your Final Destination [1]
Category: Archie Comics, Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Abandonment, Arguing, Betrayal, Break Up, Escape, Everyone hates Riverdale and wants to get out ASAP basically, Future Fic, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Jughead Has Abandonment Issues, Jughead Jones-centric, post season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 03:04:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11118576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EducationalAdmiral/pseuds/EducationalAdmiral
Summary: Sweetwater River is musty with blood that people wipe off their hands. Sometimes Jughead likes to sit there and watch them do it, watch them run away. Sometimes they glance back at him sadly, but they don't change their minds. They don't apologize for leaving him to rot there.///Or, Jughead watches as everyone he cares about leaves Riverdale, all while knowing that he's always going to be trapped there.





	Bloody Waters

**Author's Note:**

> Head the warnings please. This story includes referenced to alcoholism, suicide, death, murder, and other possibly triggering material. Proceed with caution!

Blood drips from the edges of Riverdale and he watches as his friends wash their hands off in the depths of Sweetwater River, then take off running.  
  
He looks at the ball and chain on his ankle, and knows that if he tried he'd drown.  
  
  
  
/////  
  
  
  
Veronica leaves first, which surprises no one.  
  
Her parents whisk her away almost the second she graduates, and Jughead never sees her again. Not in person at least, but her sees her over FaceTime twice.  
  
She was never there for him. He doesn't know how long Archie and Betty keep in contact with her, but they try for longer than he does.  
  
New York is a big city though, and Veronica is swallowed up by it. He hears her name in whispers for a while, hears that she's doing well, that fashion follows in her footsteps and elites smile down on her, even while she harshly glares back.  
  
He hopes she does well- accomplishes what she wants. Hopes that Hiram doesn't keep his grip to tight.  
  
_(Jughead doesn't know him well, but he doesn't trust him.)_ _  
_  
Veronica never reaches out to him.  
  
Jughead wishes she would.  
  
  
  
/////  
  
  
  
Sweetwater River is musty with blood that people wipe off their hands. Sometimes Jughead likes to sit there and watch them do it, watch them run away.  
  
Sometimes they glance back at him sadly, but they don't change their minds. They don't apologize for leaving him to rot there.  
  
  
  
/////  
  
  
  
Betty leaves next- Harvard, or Yale, or whichever of those Ivy Schools she applied to accepted her and she takes off running.  
  
She turns back once.  
  
She makes him a promise. She swears she'll come back, that she'll be loyal, that she'll call him every night and text him every morning, that she'll visit for his birthday. She promises- she swears this isn't the end for them.  
  
Jughead smiles and nods, but he knows that it won't last.  
  
Betty escapes Riverdale, waves goodbye to Jughead and Archie, kisses her sister's cheek and her babies, hugs her parents, and runs for the hills, her ponytail swaying behind her.  
  
Jughead would be lying if he said he didn't miss her terribly. He'd be lying if he said she wasn't the first person he'd ever loved with his whole heart.  
  
He leaves his foster family that night, and sleeps alone in his dad's empty trailer for the first time since sophomore year.  
  
The loneliness reminds him of her.  
  
She tries to keep contact with him the first month. Texts him good morning everyday at six and goodnight at ten. She FaceTimes him as often as possible, usually once a day if she can.  
  
But after that, the FaceTime calls drop in frequency to once a week. And then once a month, then all together disappear.  
  
She stops sending him goodnight texts.  
  
She sends him a paragraph, saying she's sorry. She can't deal with the distance. She _has_ to leave him.  
  
He glances over the message and deletes her number.  
  
The next day he gets a message from a number he vaguely recognizes through his hungover haze that says good morning.  
  
He never sees the number again.  
  
  
  
//////  
  
  
  
The water from the tap in his father's trailer starts to taste like blood.  
  
His hands are coated in the stuff.  
  
He can't get it to come off no matter how hard he tries.  
  
  
  
/////  
  
  
  
The Pussycats all leave at the same time. They get picked up by a record label.  
  
He never knew them well.  
  
  
  
/////  
  
  
  
Sometimes, when Jughead closes his eyes, he can still see the corpse. _Jason Blossom,_ cold and icy and lifeless, a bullet wound in his forehead and death on his lips.  
  
Jughead swears to _god_ he might be haunted by the ghost of Jason Blossom because the ghost has no one left to follow.  
  
Jughead wonders if he or Jason misses them all more.  
  
  
  
/////  
  
  
  
Cheryl doesn't run from Riverdale.  
  
She stumbles out, one bag, bruises on her arms from her mother's fists, tears in her eyes because _this is it,_ ** _this is it._** ** _  
_**  
She is no longer a River vixen. Her father is _gone_.  Jason is _gone._ Thornhill is _gone_.  
  
Nothing is left to hold her there, so she leaves.  
  
Jughead knows why she has to leave, he gets it. The same ghosts that haunt him haunt her.  
  
Fire burns at both of their feet, but Cheryl has the common sense to step out of the ash.  
  
  
  
/////  
  
  
  
Riverdale winters have always been so cold, and if he looks at Sweetwater River he can see blood frozen in red drops before it could dilute.  
  
Jughead remembers that when he first left his father’s house it was winter. He remembers sleeping on a bench with nothing but his wool lined coat the first few nights.  
  
He remembers the drive-in being his sanctuary.  
  
Now he's sleeping in his father's trailer, cold to the bone.  
  
  
  
/////  
  
  
  
It's Kevin and Joaquin next.  
  
Jughead isn't sure he considers Kevin a friend, he certainly didn't in sophomore year, but when Kevin and Joaquin started dating again they got closer.  
  
_(Joaquin was one of the only serpents Jughead knew super well, even if all of them were “family.”)_ _  
__  
_ But Kevin and Joaquin decide that they need a fresh start. They are Romeo and Juliet, their love separated by what they are.  
  
Kevin is the sheriff's son. Joaquin is a Southside Serpent.  
  
There was no way it would work in Riverdale.  
  
So they'll go somewhere else.  
  
Jughead waves goodbye as they wash their hands together in the river, and watches them run over the town border with their hands clasped.  
  
  
  
/////  
  
  
  
Sometimes he can still smell the smoke- he can still taste the bitter ashes of Thornhill.  
  
It reminds him of better times- when Betty's heart was still his, when Archie still smiled, when he could remember the sound of Veronica's voice and Cheryl's red lipstick.  
  
He wonders how those times could possibly be better in his mind.  
  
Because Jason was _murdered_ , his father was _thrown in jail_ , everything went to _hell_.  
  
But somehow he misses it.  
  
Because at least he mattered to someone then.  
  
  
  
/////  
  
  
  
One by one, everyone leaves.  
  
Ethel disappears, then Reggie. Chuck Clayton, Polly, all the faces he passed in the hall day after day for years and who he can't remember by name.  
  
One day, all of them are gone.  
  
Except one.  
  
  
  
/////  
  
  
  
In summer, when the sun gets too hot and the water turns to humidity, he can almost taste the blood in the air.  
  
Caught in droplets of heat and flying up into clouds only to fall back down, leave stripes on his white car and puddles of faded red on the ground.  
  
Mostly, he pretends he can't see it.  
  
  
  
/////  
  
  
  
_Archie Andrews._  
  
God, he was an _idiot_ to think that god- whichever one is up there- would _ever_ give him something as good as Archie Andrews for the long run.  
  
Still, Archie's there for him three years longer than anyone else.  
  
But then there's a knock at his father's trailers door, and Jughead opens it, and Archie is standing there with tears in his eyes, holding a letter.  
  
And he comes so close to closing the door and pretending it's not real, shoving this all far, _far_ out of mind and maybe taking a few drinks from the bottle on top of his fridge and resting for... longer than necessary.  
  
But he doesn't. He lets Archie come in and sit on the couch.  
  
They don't say a word to each other for a while.  
  
"They accepted me," Archie says. "They're signing me onto a label. Things are finally working out for me."  
  
Jughead says nothing.  
  
"After I lost my dad... I didn't think things would ever seem this good again. Especially after everyone left- Betty and Veronica. Everyone. It sucks."  
  
Jughead nods.  
  
"I'm moving to New York. The recording studio is in Brooklyn. If I'm lucky I might run into Ronnie. I'm gonna try to track her down. I assume she's still there."  
  
Jughead doesn't say anything.  
  
Archie stares at him sadly.  
  
"I'm sorry," Archie says. "For everything that's happened since... that _stupid_ fourth of July. I wish I could stay- but the label- this could be my big start, Juggie, and as much as it sucks-"  
  
_"Archie."_  
  
He clamps his mouth shut and his eyes widen.  
  
"Don't apologize if you don't mean it."  
  
And then Jughead stands up and walks to the kitchen and stares up at that bottle on top of the fridge.  
  
"Don't," Archie says. "Don't shut up me out. Please, Jug, you know you'd do the same thing if someone picked up your novel-"  
  
"Guess we'll never know, will we?"  
  
"Jughead-" He takes a step.  
  
"Just- just stop. Archie."  
  
"Jughead-" He moves closer.  
  
**"Stop!"** **  
**  
And time ceases to exist and they stand in a void of red- red blood- red blood of Jason Blossom and Fred Andrews and Archie's broken hand and cold water splashing up from Cheryl's fall and a black eye from Chuck Clayton and the fumes of spray paint and everything freezes.  
  
"If you're gonna leave me here," Jughead spits. "If you're gonna _abandon_ me just like every single _damn_ person in my life has, then just do it. _Get out of my house."_ _  
_  
Archie sighs and raises and hand to pat Jughead's shoulder but decides against it. He pauses in the doorway, but doesn't look back.  
  
Jughead doesn't watch him try to wash the blood of his hands in the river. It doesn't matter to him anymore.  
  
  
  
/////  
  
  
  
Sweetwater River is entirely red- Jughead's vision is _swimming red_ and _fury_.  
  
He's going to wash off the blood.  
  
  
  
/////  
  
  
  
There's no one left to say goodbye to.  
  
No one left to stop him.  
  
Jughead looks at the edge of the water and he can almost smile at it. He pulls off his shoes and sets them aside, hikes up the bottoms on his long jeans, pulls off his high socks.  
  
He tests the water- it's cold and thick but he can get used to it.  
  
He moves in, slowly.  
  
Something grabs his ankle- _Jason Blossoms cold hands and Clifford's noose- fire of Thornhill and ashes of the past, remnants of hope that long since died in his chest, now an empty cavity._ _  
_  
Jason and Clifford rip him _downwards._  
  
Jughead Jones never leaves Riverdale.  
  
He's buried there.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments and constructive criticism are appreciated! 
> 
> Visit me on tumblr @educationaladmiral !


End file.
